Fashionably Late News Round-up

Here’s some of the news you might have missed over the past month or-so:

In news from just a few days ago, the Mac-only Nintendo 64 emulator Sixtyforce has risen from the dead. After more than two years without an update, author Gerrit posted a new version on his birthday earlier this week. The update brings major improvements to the Cocoa interface, graphics and game compatibility, sound, and more. Download it here, and be sure to check out the MacScene discussion topic for more details (thanks erise for the tip).

The iPad launched in the United States less than a week ago, but is believed to have already sold more than 500,000 units alongside many favourable reviews. In less than 24 hours we’ll get a better idea of the iPad’s potential, as Apple will unveil iPhone OS 4.0 at an invite-only preview event.

In March, Valve officially announced that the Steam gaming service and Source engine would be coming to the Mac this month, with the Mac now considered a “tier-1 platform” by the company -- which means simultaneous release of future games for Mac and Windows. The announcement drove interest from other developers, including Gas Powered Games and DICE. Applications for the Steam on Mac beta are now open for anyone willing to tell Valve their life story (link). Check out the MacScene community's reaction here.

More emulator updates after the break.

ScummVM 1.1.0 is now official, with the new version adding support for 16-bit graphics, several more games, the engines for the games Dragon History and TeenAgent, and more. Get it here. (Thanks to emuzone from the forums for the tip.)

MacScene regular SpeedofMac has been hard at work tracking the development of the Intel-Mac version of PCSX-Reloaded, regularly compiling the latest source code for easy download. See here for more details, or hit the forum thread for the latest info.

That’s not all SpeedofMac has been up to, though. The very un-Mac-like Nintendo 64 emulator Mupen64Plus is now much easier to use, thanks to the SpeedofMac MP64+ Launcher, which removes the need to run the emulator from the command-line. Check out the forum thread for more information.

CrispyXUK from the forums pointed out that the open-source multi-console emulator Open Emu has reached version 1.0.0b6. Open Emu currently boasts support for the engines from CrabEmu (Sega Master System/Game Gear), Gambatte (Game Boy/Game Boy Color), Gens/GS (Sega Genesis/CD/32x), Nestopia (NES), SNES9x (SNES), and VisualBoy (Game Boy Advance). To find out more or download, visit the emulator homepage here.

Jum52, an Atari 5200 emulator has been updated to version 1.1.0. New features include support for saved states, PAL timings, and voice emulation, as well as parity with the Windows version. Find out more at the emulator page at Richard Bannister’s website. Thanks to vitaflo for the forum post about the news.

Richard Bannister also updated the arcade music player M1 to version 0.7.9a1, adding support for more than 600 games, which means it can now play music from over 1900 games -- that’s a lot of tunes. The source code has also been released.